Tight Legislative Calendar Awaits Congress

With only a month left on the legislative calendar, Congress and
President Clinton have a lot of work to do.

Although Republicans have shown little interest in the president's
call for hiring 100,000 new teachers, renovating or building 5,000
public schools, and making big increases in education technology
spending, Mr. Clinton continued to push his agenda in public events in
late August.

But with members of Congress eager to recess by early October in
order to hit the campaign trail and the president feeling the effects
of the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, there appears to be little chance
that Mr. Clinton will secure victories this fall for all of his
programs.

Over the next month, Congress will concentrate mostly on passing the
annual appropriations bills that pay for education and other programs.
The House's education spending bill, which ignores most of the
president's agenda, calls for a 2.5 percent funding increase for the
Department of Education. Mr. Clinton has already said he would veto the
measure because it falls $2 billion short of what he wants.

Republicans are countering the president's agenda with their own
plans for folding 31 education programs into a block grant and
overhauling federal bilingual education initiatives. Even if those
manage to pass Congress this year, they probably would also face the
veto pen.

Meanwhile, Congress and Mr. Clinton are more likely to agree on a
bill to reauthorize federal student loans and other programs in the
Higher Education Act.

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